We just released OBS 2.2.72, another alpha release for OBS 2.3. The most significant change to former alpha snapshots is the switch to apache. We do so for a number of reasons:

Getting a maintained base again for our default httpd

Using mod_rails (passenger) is more flexible then the static setup before

Optimizations are possible via additional modules (more about that later)

We think that some bugs like the invalid occassional empty replies by the api server are solved via this switch as well.

The OBS 2.2.72 appliance is already comming with apache setup. Please note that we use also SSL by default, a default SSL CA is created on bootup and becomes part of your data partition.

In case you use the packages outside of the appliance, you need to do some configuration steps. But don’t worry, a apache vhost file comes with the packages already and only a few steps need to be done, the README files should reflect this already.

lighttpd setups should still work, but please note that lighttpd is running with an own user id (“lighttpd”) and the default is now the generic “wwwrun” user for some directories.

I like to suggest a general policy for openSUSE:Factory project to document from where a tar ball (or any other file from upstream) is comming from. Why that ? It makes it much easier to review version updates and it guarantees that no one can inject some mal code via a modifed tar ball.

So far I added the source services “download_url” and “tar_scm” to our OBS instance, which downloads the files and stores them as files via a commit. Some people use them already, some others don’t like them because they store the files with _service: prefix.

In last hackweek, I added another way to handle this, which I would like to request as setup and policy for openSUSE:Factory project. You can add a project wide source service, for example the new “download_files” service. That would mean that no needs to add a _service file to the sources anymore. It is enough to add an URL to the spec file Source: tags. The service will automatically download it from there.

But that does mean we still have have _service:download_files:osc-0.1.tar.bz2 file names ? Not when we also add the new “trylocal” parameter and use latest osc versions. This parameter will let act osc to execute the services, but name the files without prefix and commit them together with the other files.

Where is the advantage then ? The server is still validating that this is an identical file. It downloads it again and compares it. In case it is the same file, nothing will happen.

What will happen, when the file differes ? We basically have two options, either we can let the service mark the source as broken or we would store the file with _service: prefix again.

The later mode has the advantage that you can still do version upgrades via slow connections and let the server download the files.

Please find some more details about new possibilities with the source services here.

An example setup for this can be tested via

osc bco home:adrianSuSE:FactoryTest bc

and do for example a version downgrade to 1.05 version to see how it works. Please note that you need the osc from openSUSE:Tools:Unstable project for this.

We can also apply the still suse-internal spec formater and validator scripts via this way later one.

Another advantage of this setup would be the new “update_source” service, which could run in some openSUSE:Factory:AutoUpdate project and tries automatic version upgrades when upstream releases a new version. They could be reviewed and just picked (directly or with additional manual fixes).

The openSUSE Build Service Books have a new chapter called HOWTOs. These will be written for asked questions, the first one existing is how to work best with OBS if you have limited bandwidth. There are multiple methods to avoid large downloads or even uploads of large files (like tar balls) and let just the server do the work…

Yet another foto stream from the openSUSE conference. You see the desktop leads from KDE and Gnome (Cornelius Schumacher and Vincent Untz) giving a talk about the past and future of the free desktop, Stephan Kulow about the future of the distribution, Bernhard Wiedemann about QA testing and so on.

Most important may be the presentation of the openSUSE board (mainly by Pascal Bleser) how they plan to found an independent foundation for openSUSE as non-profit organization. An important rule of that foundation is that it is independent of any company (no majority of Novell here) but can handle sponsoring, partnering and trademark questions.

We had also very filled rooms during the OBS talks, but I was unable to take pictures at that point of time unfortunately 😉

LinuxTag 2010 has ended, openSUSE had a booth in the community area and we had a number talks. We also released OBS 2.0 on LinuxTag. You know this of course already, but here are some impressions.

openSUSE booth was very well visited. Various workshops and activities created several times actually a big swarm around it. Many people were interessted about OBS in special and I hope we won some more OBS users and developers.

Hennes and mine talk about “how to escape the free software hell” was provocant enough to get quite some people into our room directly after the keynote. I hope we were able to show off the coolness of OBS there.

Read the comments in the picture gallery for some background information.